DC Day 6: Return Home & Trip Wrap-up

I woke up our last day in DC and checked my e-mail only to discover that our 11:35 flight out had been delayed an hour to 12:40. Since I was exhausted, I texted my mom, told Adam, and went back to sleep.

We all met at 9:30, and checked out before walking to the Metro from our hotel for the last time. It was a quick 20 minute Metro ride to the airport.

 Once we arrived, we discovered the flight had been delayed further to 1. Annoying. Security took forever to get through, but we had plenty of time so it was fine. There wasn't much shopping in our concourse, but we found one place to grab a few souvenirs including a DC Christmas ornament for our tree. Then we had lunch and waited for our flight.

They announced it was ready to board at 12:30, so everyone clustered around the gate. And waited. And waited some more. At 12:50, one of the gate crew came on to announce that there was a lavatory issue they were dealing with and we "might not make our 1 pm departure." Really? Ya think? We finally boarded at 1:10, and took off at 1:30. Two hours later than was scheduled. Luckily the delay was on our return, and since it was a direct flight, it was merely an inconvenience instead of a huge disruption to our vacation.

Once again on the way out, we had a view of the National Mall,

and Lincoln Memorial.

Flying over one of the Great Lakes

Once back, we took the light rail back to Terminal 2. My parents dropped us off at home, and were off. We unpacked and relaxed before Chester was dropped off by Adam's parents at 6. We were so excited to see him, and he was super excited too. It's so nice to have family willing to watch him. I don't think we'd ever go on vacation if we didn't have anyone to watch him as boarding him would be so stressful for the little guy. A big THANK YOU to Curt and Robin.

DC was a really fun family trip. There is so much to see, and we really crammed it in which meant there wasn't a lot of relaxing. But it was worth it to see it all!

Here's the rest of the recap in one spot -
DC Day 1: Arrival & a Rainy Moonlight Tour
DC Day 2: Capitol Hill & Smithsonian
DC Day 3: Mount Vernon & WWII Monument
DC Day 3: Twins at Nationals Ballpark
DC Day 4: Holocaust Museum + Smithsonians
DC Day 4: Make-up Game at Nationals Park
DC Day 5: Pandas at the National Zoo + Crawfish
DC Day 5: Smithsonians + Arlington


DC Favorites:
Stef - Twins game at Nationals Park, U.S. Capitol Tour, Smithsonian Museums

Adam - Twins game at Nationals Park

Christine - Twins game at Nationals Park, Giant Pandas at the National Zoo

Mom - Giant Pandas at the National Zoo, Smithsonian Museums

Dad - World War II Memorial, Arlington, and U.S. Capitol tour

Regrets:
The only thing we didn't do, which I wish we would have had time and energy for was walking the Monuments during the day. We never saw the Jefferson Monument up close, or the Lincoln Memorial, Vietnam Wall or Korean Memorial during the day.
And of course there was the American History Museum fiasco - but at least we had an hour to rush through it. Of all the days to close early...